RE: You'll never get fired for recommending IBM - sorry - Microsoft

[MHawkins () TULLIB COM]

You know, the more I think about this, and the more I read, I agree with the
use of the term monoculture.

Because Microsoft is not a monopoly.

And I copy a brief exchange that came up on the "I'm feeling lucky google
button" for "meaning of the word monopoly".

Evidently, people know think that a monopoly means "I have to use a product
because everybody else uses it". Sorry, that comes nowhere near the true
meaning of the word.

Read on... http://www.control.com/994793842/index_html

Here is the text.

Re: MS 'Monopoly'? was ENGR WinNT Reliability
Jul 10, 2001 3:37 pm, by Ralph Mackiewicz
Text :
> Please refer to zdnet.com for information regarding the US appeals
> court decision. MS does, in point of fact and law, maintain a
> monopoly in the desktop operating systems market. Furthermore, MS
> has, in point of fact and law, violated section 2 of the Sherman
> Anti-trust law. You can say and believe what you want, but the facts
> are evident as attested to in mind-numbing and sleep inducing detail
> by the courts.

Just because a bunch of congressman and senators in the early part of the
twentieth century misused the word monopoly when they wrote the
Sherman Anti-trust law doesn't change the meaning of the word.

What the federal judiciary has been doing regarding MS is ruling on a point
of law, not on a definition. They said MS had a "monopoly" on
desktop o/s **AS DEFINED BY THE SHERMAN ANTI-TRUST LAW**. There is a reason
why legal and medical terms are sometimes defined by latin
names: so the legal/medical meaning doesn't get confused with the real
definition in popular usage. Too bad they didn't do that with Sherman.

You can say that Microsoft is the dominant supplier of desktop O/S but they
don't have a monopoly on anything other than Windows.

> Laws exist to prevent monopolies, not protect them.... And, as stated
> above and by the courts, this one does exist.

Laws do not prevent monopolies. Laws create them. Try to setup a company to
distribute electricity to residential customers and you will soon enough
discover how the law is used to enforce a monopoly. Then to compare, start a
company to market graphical user interface operating systems in competition
with MS. You may have some trouble
getting investors but you won't get arrested for it. The last I heard Linus
Torvalds is still a free man.

> I would also question the accuracy of your "hundreds of choices"
> reference.

OK. I exaggerated a little. The RTOS buyers guide lists 33 O/Ses in their
listing. That doesn't even include MS, Linux, and the Unix variations. So
there are over 30 operating systems available not hundreds. Sorry.

> In closing, neither you nor I are a lawyer, but the judges are. You
> may not like what they said, but MS does fit the legal definition of a
> monopoly, and has fulfilled the legal definition of violation of US
> Anti-Trust law. Therefore, by definition, they are a monopoly.

I may not be a lawyer but I do know the difference between a legal opinion
(MS is a monopoly as defined by the Sherman Anti-trust Act)
and the incorrect assertion that there are no choices because MS has a
monopoly on operating systems. Curt W. is proof enough of how this
latter assertion is incorrect: he is building systems that don't have MS in
it.

Regards,
Ralph Mackiewicz

-----Original Message-----
From: Bill Royds [mailto:broyds () rogers com]
Sent: Wednesday, December 17, 2003 11:54 PM
To: 'George Capehart'; Hawkins, Michael; mjr () ranum com;
breno () gamebox net
Cc: firewall-wizards () honor icsalabs com
Subject: RE: [fw-wiz] You'll never get fired for recommending IBM -
sorry - Microsoft


The term that should be used instead of monoculture is monopoly. That is the
best word to describe Microsoft desktop software and it was even proved to
be so in a court of law in the U.S. 
Monopolies are not always bad. AT&T  once had a monopoly on the U.S. phone
market which was accepted for various reasons. But it also had to report
closely to government to ensure that it was not trampling over too many
others. There were still some small competition to ATT&T like in various
places like Rochester Telephone in Rochester N.Y.. But a monopoly is the
state when market share is so dominant that there are areas where it is the
sole player and they make up more than 50% of the market.
 The break-up of ATT&T has given us the Baby Bells like Verizon, SBC and
BellSouth that are still near monopolies in their marketplace, but it has
increased the innovation in the telecommunications market.
  Funny enough Apache is almost a monopoly player in the web server market
and Microsoft is the competitor breaking the monopoly up. 


-----Original Message-----
From: firewall-wizards-admin () honor icsalabs com
[mailto:firewall-wizards-admin () honor icsalabs com] On Behalf Of George
Capehart
Sent: December 17, 2003 5:24 PM
To: MHawkins () TULLIB COM; mjr () ranum com; breno () gamebox net
Cc: firewall-wizards () honor icsalabs com
Subject: Re: [fw-wiz] You'll never get fired for recommending IBM - sorry -
Microsoft

On Tuesday 16 December 2003 10:15 pm, MHawkins () TULLIB COM wrote:
> What do you call a monolithic representation of a predominantly
> identical membership within a group?

You know, I've been staring at this sentence for a while now.  I 
recognize *all* of the words, but when I try to parse that sentence my 
parser blows up . . . is this a troll?

/g
-- 
George Capehart

capegeo at opengroup dot org

PGP Key ID: 0x63F0F642 available on most public key servers

"It is always possible to agglutenate multiple separate problems into a
 single complex interdependent solution.  In most cases this is a bad
 idea."  -- RFC 1925

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